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12 Oct 2017

FG Moves to Enforce 'No Work, No Pay' Rule

In the light of the foregoing, any government worker that embarks on any industrial strike action might not be paid his salary.

The Federal Government has started the process of enforcing the ‘no work, no pay’ rule said to be captured in the Trade Disputes of the Federation.

Once enforced, any worker who embarks on industrial action will lose his or her pay for that period while the period of the strike will not be pensionable.

The Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, disclosed this to State House correspondents at the end of the weekly meeting of the Federal Executive Council presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

He said the decision formed part of the report of a technical committee established on April 27, 2016. He said, “First and foremost, the report emphasised the need to implement the law on ‘no work, no pay.’ The ‘no work, no pay’ is not a rule, neither is it a policy. It is a law captured on Trade Disputes Act of Federation.

“Section 43 to be precise says that workers have a right to disengage from an employer if there is a break down in discussions or negotiations. But for the period that the worker does so, the employer should not pay and those periods are to be counted as non-pensionable times in the period of work.

“So council today re-emphasised that that law is still in force and that it should be brought to the knowledge of workers in the public and private sector, especially those in the public sector.

“We have to do that because of the spate of industrial crisis we have suffered in the last two months, when we had plethora of strikes all over the place.

“So council has said this should be reemphasised to workers so that they will know. Meanwhile, for the strike embarked upon the last time, we will see what we can do about that because there is a law in place.”